1960s-era Willys Gassers - The Hack Brothers

As fun as it is when you're totally absorbed in the act of finding, repairing, building, and driving a hot rod, there is no greater joy than doing the exact same thing with a few like-minded buddies who will go to the same depths as you.

The Hack Brothers isn't really a car club, nor are any of the participants related to each other, unless you closely examine their hot rod DNA, which is where you might find the common thread: a love for the 1960s-era Willys Gassers.

Jump on the computer and look up "Gasser Wars" or "Willys Gasser" and you could spend the rest of your life reading up on the slice of hot rodding history that dominated dragstrips of the mid 1960s.

But long before there were personal computers in everyone's homes (let alone in everyone's pockets), these four fanatics found each other through their common love of Willys and started hanging out while each other built their respective rides.

Whether they show up in force at hot rod functions in the Midwest or just roll into a local parking lot in their hometown of Joplin, Missouri, people take notice. And as much fun as it would be to take any one of these coupes down the highway, there really isn't anything better than cruising down the street in a Willys Gasser, only to look in the rearview mirror to see three more of your friends bringing up the rear in their rides.

2/17Chuck Comer, 55, was turned onto Willys Gassers as a kid when the bubblegum package he just opened had a photo of John Mazmanian’s Willys in it. He was hooked at 15. In 1977, just after high school, he found the body of his 1940 Willys at the end of a dead-end road. After contacting the owner, he paid $150 for it, and that was without a firewall or decklid. After getting the car up and running a neighbor told him he believed he used to race the car throughout Texas, Missouri, and Kansas, and, after some research, they were able to confirm that it was indeed the same car.

6/17At 67 years old, Terry West easily remembers seeing his 1939 Willys on a trailer with a For Sale sign on it. That was in 1969. It was a drag car and it even sported orange Plexiglas door windows! He didn’t really know what it was, but he knew he liked it. Terry paid $450 (including the trailer) to the owner, Jim McMurray, who had run the coupe at Mo-Kan Dragway seven years before his son, current NASCAR superstar Jamie McMurray, was even born.

10/17Now 57, Jim Hunt chased this 1939 Willys coupe for 20 years before he could purchase it. He first saw it in Oklahoma in 1985 with a "Not For Sale" sign on it. The owner, who had bought it in 1967 out of a junkyard for $65, got tired of people asking if it was for sale and moved it to a field in western Kansas in 1990. In 2003 a farmer told Jim about the coupe and, two years later, the owner contacted Jim to see if he still wanted it. He did, paying $3,000 for it, three months before the former owner died.

14/17Back in 1983, when he was 27 years old, Mike Forgerson was cruising Arkansas back roads with fellow Hack Brother, Chuck Comer, when the pair came upon a couple of old rusty cars. They ended up finding the owner, who told them about a brush-covered hilltop where hundreds of 1950s cars were stored. The trio snuck onto the property, found a 1938 coupe, and then set out to contact the owner to see if it was for sale. It was (for $650) but, because of inclement weather, it took nine months before Mike was able to buy the coupe, which also came with its original title.